Oolite Bulletins

Split from Your Ad Here thread. I intended to include my original post, but made a mistake. -- Ahruman

Ahruman wrote:

A request for politically-minded ad artists: I’d like to see a suitably sinister spoof of:

I used to believe in things, but...

[jumps up on the soapbox]

...living on a planet where such posters are not sinister spoofs is part of what made me give up being politically minded. When governments can issue such posters without causing riots and revolution you know that the local system description is something along the lines of:

Smallbrained Fat Sheepoids, Dictatorship, The planet Earth is fabled for it's inhabitants' ingrained docility and it's extremely gullible population.

One thing's certain: If humans ever really make it into deep space it'll be as someone else's lunch.

War, polution, the crap we're fed and even cars alone kill so many more people than terrorists could ever hope to, but let's all run around in small circles being scared of terrorists, school shootings and pedophiles, because thats what the politicians and media tell us to worry about and they'd never mislead us... I used to wonder how anything like what happened in Germany during the 3rd Reich was possible - now I wonder what causes those tiny windows of freedom and thinking that appear dotted throughout history.

[steps down from soapbox and re-enters a-political mode]

Boots, braces, ball, beer and The Business Oi! Oi! Oi! Saturday's game's gonna be great! I really hope my team wins.

EDIT: Made one for the commies

lunch...the gospel of 'V'.

Those posters... even the art-style* reminds me of 'brave new world', Metropolis and 1984.
(*Clean, fascist propaganda type)

Call me crazed brainwashed sheep, but I love the style, as A_H said v.Orwellian. The message is definately sinister, my journey from home to central London apparently has 1800 camera's...

@Dr. Nil:
I'm sad to admit I completely agree with your comments.
The wonder is not that we live in this kind of Orwellian Horror, but that we have any freedoms at all!

"What luck for the rulers that men do not think."
-Adolf Hitler-

"The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."
-Adolf Hitler-

I suspect you could subsitute that infamous name for the vast majority of our political 'leaders' ( past and present ) and those quotes would not seem out of place!

'The IQ of any group of people is roughly equal to the IQ of the dumbest member divided by the number of that group'.

On this general topic: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/1984book/

Thanks Ahruman:
petition signed, awaitng conformation e-mail - I suppose I shouldn't be suprised there were only 16 other names...
[sigh]

Charlie wrote:

'The IQ of any group of people is roughly equal to the IQ of the dumbest member divided by the number of that group'.

()

mob 'intelligence'.

Doesn't count for online communities... unless they start mobbing in a flamewar.

Dr. Nil wrote:

Smallbrained Fat Sheepoids, Dictatorship, The planet Earth is fabled for it's inhabitants' ingrained docility and it's extremely gullible population.

"This is how freedom ends: to the sound of thunderous applause."
Sen. Amidala Organa

If they want to prevent crime, why is it a crime to bug politicians?

Dr. Nil wrote:

Boots, braces, ball, beer and The Business Oi! Oi! Oi! Saturday's game's gonna be great! I really hope my team wins.

"To the people? Bread and circus!"
Hyppolitus

"Religion is the people's opium"
Mao Tse-Tung

Yo, make it two beers... Thar was penalty! Never mind, I'm discuss it with that chick on the bar.
---
Say, what's a nice girl like ya doin' in a joint like this? Wanna be thrown to da wall and be called a gecko?
---
Damn, for some reason she didn't wanted to have wild sex with me... But it works on TV, I wonder what I did wrong!

"Religion is the people's opium"
Mao Tse-Tung

wasn't that Karl Marx?

Indeed:

Karl Marx: Einleitung zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie wrote:

Das religiöse Elend ist in einem der Ausdruck des wirklichen Elendes und in einem die Protestation gegen das wirkliche Elend.

Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüt einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volkes.

Oooops... Obviously a case of mistaken identity! Then again, it's difficult tell a bush-bearded commie from the next.

(What? Mao wasn't bearded? Oh, shush that, he was a marxist anyway and at least nobody spoke about my pickup lines!)

Agree totally Doc!

Hid a bit of Polictics in Assassins.oxp as in :-
Take 1,000 from the date and it is true!

I started practice as a defence lawyer 12 years ago. I measured my copy of Archbold on Criminal law (1995 edition) and found it to be 3 inches thick. I just measured my 2007 edition (plus supplemnets, Banks on Sentencing, Thomas Sentencing Refenferencer and Thomas on Sentencing). Even allowing for the fact that the editors of Archbold now print on tissue paper to fit the law in, I now carry around with me a law book 9 inches thick. To put that in perspective, the UK govenment has created more crimes in the last 10 years, than were passed in the previous 1,000 years!!!!

"He that prefers securuity over liberty deserves neither."

I continue to rebel by taking Legal Aid trials, mentions and sentences for fees of 10p per hour. However if from Monday 30/4/07 you find yourself falsly accused you'll have to represent yourself.

Although as a lawyer I'd charge you less than a mechanic on private rates, it would be a criminal offence for you to pay me and a criminal offence for me to accept payment. (Proceeds of Crime Act 2003).

So if as a UK citizen you and your partner together earn more than £15K per year, you'll have to represent yourself and pay the costs of investigating the case and instructing experts.

On the CCTV point, whilst Big Brother is watching you, Big Brother is also too lazy to acutally collect the evidence! We may be the most watched society, but 95% of CCTV is coltroled by private firms. They wipe the tapes after 28 days and the police are far too lazy to acually go an collect the evidence!

I am currently repesenting a man of good character accused of a S18 stabing (automatic life if convicted, my fee less than £5 per hour).

The OIC asked the Defendant what happened and the victim. He then failed to ask any of the 24 witnesses what they had to say, nor did he size the CCTV tape. As the Officer sat on his backside for 2 months, the tape has now been destroyed. The trial was then delayed by 3 months (whist the cops photocopied the 20 pages of evidence - it takes the police longer to copy papers in the C21 than a monk in the C10!), then by another 3 months (OIC on holiday), then by another 6 months as the OIC was on "sick leave".

As the Defence we have 14 days to investage the case, see the client proof the witnesses etc! (unpaid of course!)

Sounds like the sort of thing the European Court of Human Rights should be interested in, after the McLibel and all!

What are you waiting for to make a case out of it, mr. pro bono*?


*I call you this with deep and sincere respect, sorry if I sound rude...

The means testing of Crown Court Legal Aid does raise an interesting point. In an alleged child rape last week, the CPS had instructed a DNA expert, who concluded that the presence of the Defendant's DNA on the girl's chest provided "extremley strong support" for the contention that the Defendant had touched her under her clothes.

This was entirely wrong. In fact the DNA could have come from any human male. The CPS scientist had assumed that as the girl was 13 she had no sexual contact with any men and so male DNA was significant as the Defendant admitted that he had been with her on the day. In fact the 13 year old was a prostitute in regular contact with men, so the fact that male DNA was present proved nothing.

On Legal Aid rates I'd charge £2,000 for a 5 day rape (plus PDH, mentions, sentence, S41 notice, bad character notice, hearsay notice etc), which works out as a profit of about £20 per hour. On private cases I charge the same as I would be paid on Legal Aid, which I guess most people could just about afford. The real problem is paying experts. In this case I applied for Legal Aid to be extended and the LSC paid the £3000 charged by the expert to retest the samples and do his report and the £100 per hour he charged for giving evidence and waiting at court.

Under the new system (assuming the Client could afford me but not the expert) I simply would not know that the Crown DNA expert had got it completley wrong, so how could I challenge it?

S41 has been consided by the Court of Appeal House of Lords (Re: A 2001) and ECUH. (This section prevents the Defence asking the complainant any questions about her sexual history and permits the Crown to lie to the Jury. For example if a prostitute claims to be a virgin who would never have sex with any man, the Jury cannot be told that this is a lie! The Crown can however tell them all about the Defendant's convictions if he has any and he can be asked about his sexual history). All Courts ruled that this breachs Article 6 (right to a fair trial), however neither the UK courts or the ECHR have the power to strike down an Act, the can only say that it is incompatable.

If you cannot afford a lawyer privatley, then you cannot even represent yourself. (YJCE 1999 prevents you asking any questions of the Complainant!).

By the way, don't belive any press reports you read of UK sentencing hearings. The CJA 2003 makes it an offence for the press to report any "derogratory assertions" advanced in mitigataion. So if you punch someone because he has raped your daughter, this will not be reported.

Why have we got to this situation? 10 years of the popular press banging on about rebalancing the system in favour of victims. People forget that Crown witnesses don't allways tell the truth and the police don't always arrest the right person. Somtimes the victim is the man in the dock.